Reality?

Reality is a noun, but not a person, place, or thing. I can say I am very glad I do not have to play 20 questions to figure out this word. Reality is an idea. It is a perspective that is completely unique to each person, individual. What is reality to me, may not be reality to you. Sometimes, when a word is difficult to understand, it is helpful to think of its opposite in an attempt to understand better. The closest opposite of reality is fantasy. Fantasy is unreal, made-up, or imaginary. The opposite of all those words is real, and you should not define a word with itself. For inspiration, I often Google image search to get some ideas about what to write about. When I search ‘reality’ in google image I get a bunch of comics and funny road signs, as well as strangely enough, fish sandwiches. This indicates that people do not enjoy reality, thus the number of jokes about reality. When I search ‘fantasy’, I get many images that look really cool and many things that are commonly accepted as not real. So back to reality (pun intended), reality is something that is, not something that you think. When you think of something, that is a mental creation. As soon as you create “it,” then “it” exists, and “it” is reality. So the line between fantasy and reality is very thin, think to create. A broader sense of my reality can be defined as my life. What I am living is what I consider my reality, though my reality is clearly composed of fantasies. I tell myself untrue things all the time, and added together, those things make up a fantasy I have created for myself, but that is the life I am living. The composition of my fantasies makes up my reality. Then, I ask myself, can my fantasies be my reality, or does that make my reality a fantasy?

  Reality                                                           Fantasy

Small Organization

Organization comes in all sizes. From the swirling galaxies all the way down to individual cells, and actually even smaller. During mitosis (cellular division) organization can be seen clearly in metaphase; the phase where the chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell, a sort of symmetry. 

The organization seen above in the video is symmetry. The chromosomes (pink) line up in the middle of the cell in a repetitive pattern seen throughout nearly all eukaryotic cells. This organization is integral to all eukaryotic life on the planet. 

Statue: Power of Thought

From: http://www.hudsonalpha.org/hudsonalpha-journal-2010-volume-2-issue-5

The bronze statue above, by Victor Issa titled “Power of Thought,” illustrates the evolution of thinking and ideas in several ways. It is located in front of the HudsonAlpha Institute in Huntsville, Alabama, which is a center housing small businesses and research facilities in biotech and pharmaceutical to promote innovation. In several places on the statue the viewer can see how the artist depicted technology through art. In the right hand of the statue, it appears he is holding DNA. Though if you look closer (and in person), you can see that the strand is an evolution that ends in DNA. The beginning of the strand is a wheel, and the wheel morphs into an old-fashion train, and that train into a more modern bullet train, and then that train appears to be driving up the tracks that lead to the strand of DNA that the figure is holding. Thus, the artist is indicating that the wheel is the invention that started the proverbial ‘wheel’ rolling to the discovery of DNA. In the other hand of the statue, he is releasing a modern plane. Behind the released plane, not quite visible in this picture, is a plane by the Wright Brothers, once again depicting the evolution of technology. Around the base of the statue appear different ‘landmarks’ through the ages, including some architecture I cannot quite distinguish, a person that is probably an important person in history, and a footprint, which I am guessing is to depict man walking in new places and directions, or possibly on the moon. I really enjoyed this sculpture because it really integrates and shows the transition from old technology to new technology and how far humans have developed technology.

From: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010639629/

Questions for Paper

What in advertising makes people want to go on diets?
Who feels like they need to go on a diet and why do they feel that way?

Website Evaluations

Bad: Blackboard

Blackboard is not a student user friendly site; it has many functions that are not useful, and it is not user friendly on the teacher side either. First, the site is not visually appealing because the simple design does not look clean. After logging in, the MyCLEmson tab is nearly useless with nearly nothing that I use on that page. The only reason I check blackboard is for new documents and grades. To find these two things, I must make at least four clicks, and usually more, to even see if there is something new for me to look at. On the main page after logging in, nothing on the left column of the page I have ever clicked on. And I usually don’t click on the courses on the right side either because they take longer to load than clicking the Courses tab at the top of the page. Not being user friendly on the teacher side is an assumption I have made based off of what I see as a student. Announcements, tasks, and calendar events are never posted so I must go through each individual course to figure out when are all test days and assignments. I assume that if they were easy to post or automated the teachers would put them up. If blackboard was designed better, there would be more of an automated filling in of the calendar and tasks for the student as well as a better notification system for new content.

Good: Pandora

Pandora is an ingenious internet radio site. In addition to the brilliant idea of the site, the design of the site is pleasing to the eye and simple to use. The welcome screen while loading is blue with circles and simply says PANDORA. It has no slow loading of parts of the page or a bar that goes to 99% and stays there. 

After loading, the only screen is the main one, so no more waiting for pages to load. From the main screen, on the top left there is a simple search bar for creating new stations. All your current stations are listed clearly down the left column. What is now playing is in the dark blue box in the middle with the album art and a description below of the song. Finally, the play and thumbs up/thumbs down button are clearly at the top next to the sound. This site has gone through a renovation since I began using it and the web designer did a great job of improving their previous design. Now it is all blue and simple, just like Facebook.

Magazine Cover Story

In the July 2012 issue of Today’s Diet & Nutrition, the cover story title boasts “A Perfect Picnic.” The background of the cover photo already gives a hint at the topic of the article. The unfocused green leaves in the background with the sun playing gently though them gives the immediate impression of a warm summer’s day outdoors. Then, in the bottom half of the photo, there is the stereotypical picnic item: a red checkered blanket or table cloth. The main focus of the photo is a sandwich on a ciabatta rolls; however, the sandwich is not the stereotypical sandwich. The lunch meat is noticeably absent in this sandwich advertised in a nutrition magazine. The sandwich appears to have tomato, fresh mozzarella, red onion, and arugula; a fact that is confirmed when reading the article. The “Easy Caprese Sandwich” also includes, “basil pesto and kalamata olives” which I wish would have been included in the picture. It would give the final touch to the photo that really communicates the fact that this sandwich is really just a salad put on fancy bread. After reading the article, this sandwich could not be much easier to make, with the instructions even including the phrase “and close each sandwich with the other side of the roll” as if that wasn’t self-explanatory, but I do understand that you cannot assume the reader knows anything when writing a recipe.To end, the article included several suggestions on what to have with this picnic sandwich. The list included items such as “a bottle of wine, a bowl of fresh berries, and your best friends.” While I am not sure about the sandwich, the rest of that list sounds like a wonderful picnic to me.

"A Perfect Picnic." Today's Diet & Nutrition July 2012: 38-39. Print.

[Sorry if this was not exactly what you were looking for, the only magazines we have are about food. My family is food obsessed.] 

Possible Sources

Cruise, Jorge. The 3-hour diet for teens: lose weight and feel great in two weeks!. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print.

        The book is a general diet book for teens. In the introduction section there is a paragraph about how media and advertising impacts dieting.


Hungrige, Angela . Unequal Treatment: The Differences of Body Image Advertisements Containing Food and Supplements in Fashion Magazines for Men and Women. University of Houston-Clear Lake: ProQuest, 2008. Print.

         May be more of an article summary paper than a book. However, it has some good information about ads targeting body image, and has sources at the end that I could investigate. 

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual communication: images with messages. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print.

        The book is more of a general visual rhetoric book but it does have several mentions of diets.

All found from google books search online